62 The Natural History 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE 



THE NATURALIST'S SUMMER-EVENING 



WALK 



. . . equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis 

 Ingenium. VlRG. Georg. 



When day declining sheds a milder gleam, 

 What time the may-fly ^ haunts the pool or stream ; 

 When the still owl skims round the grassy mead, 

 What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed ; 

 Then be the time to steal adown the vale, 

 And listen to the vagrant '^ cuckoo's tale ; 

 To hear the clamorous ^ curlew call his mate, 

 Or the soft quail his tender pain relate ; 

 To see the swallow sweep the dark'ning plain 

 Belated, to support her infant train ; 

 To mark the swift in rapid giddy ring 

 Dash round the steeple, unsubdu'd of wing : 

 Amusive birds ! — say where your hid retreat 

 When the frost rages and the tempests beat ; 

 Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, 

 When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head ? 

 Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride, 

 The GOD of NATURE is your secret guide ! 



While deepening shades obscure the face of day 

 To yonder bench, leaf-shelter'd, let us stray, 

 Till blended objects fail the swimming sight, 

 And all the fading landscape sinks in night ; 



^ The angler's may-fly, the ephetnera vtilgata Litin., comes forth 

 from its aurelia state, and emerges out of the water about six in the 

 evening, and dies about eleven at night, determining the date of its 

 fly stale in about five or six hours. They usually begin to appear 

 about the 4th of June, and continue in succession for near a fort- 

 night. See Swammerdam, Derham, Scopoli, etc. 



^ Vagrant cuckoo ; so called because, being tied down by no 

 incubation or attendance about the nutrition of its young, it wanders 

 without control. 



^ Charadrius oedicnenms. 



